After Being Widowed For Ten Years - Chapter 8

Unable to make sense of the problem, An Rong simply stopped dwelling on it.

“Since I’m still alive, there must have been a mistake in the reports,” An Rong muttered to herself. “Maybe they just didn’t find me.”

Lying in the darkness, An Rong continuously stroked Pei Chongxi’s back, softly comforting her, “Sleep well, sleep well. I’m right here.”

Catching a scent of An Rong’s breath and feeling her body heat, Pei Chongxi burrowed deeper into An Rong’s embrace, murmuring in a small voice.

“An’an, don’t leave. Stay with me a little longer… just a little longer will do.”

For the past ten years, Pei Chongxi had rarely slept a single night in peace.

Suddenly waking up to broad daylight, Pei Chongxi stared at the ceiling in a daze.

The window was left open, and bright daylight streamed in from outside.

The room was completely empty.

“Where are you?” Pei Chongxi snapped her eyes open, suddenly bolting upright in bed.

There was no warm body of a young girl in her arms, all she held was a pillow clutched into a wrinkled mess.

Everything on the bed was crumpled, and beneath the bed sat only her own pair of slippers. There was nothing else left, making it seem as though last night’s dream had been nothing more than an illusion.

The lingering laziness of a rare good sleep instantly vanished. All that remained was the violent, thumping beat of her heart, each throb making it difficult for Pei Chongxi to catch her breath.

She had dreamed of the old days, celebrating the New Year with An Rong in their rented room. They hadn’t had the money to buy much back then.

Pei Chongxi had grown up in an orphanage. She was eccentric, aloof, and never got along well with others.

Perhaps it was precisely because of her difficult personality that she had been abandoned at the orphanage gates right after she was born.

An Rong’s family lived in the mountains. She had tested into a high school in the city by herself, but her family couldn’t afford the tuition. She had relied on town incentives and school scholarships to waive part of the fees just to keep attending school…

The two unfortunate girls had no choice but to work jobs tirelessly, over and over, just to strive for a better life.

Both An Rong and Pei Chongxi had noticeable chilblains on their hands that would itch fiercely in the winter, though An Rong’s were much worse.

An Rong would always laugh at herself, saying she wasn’t very book-smart, so even when looking for part time work, she could only find manual labor unlike Pei Chongxi, who could at least sell her study notes.

Pei Chongxi looked down at her own well-defined fingers, which bore no trace of ever being frozen by wind and snow.

Yet in her dream, An Rong’s red and purple, frozen fingers were still vividly etched in her mind.

“So it really was just my hallucination.”

A bitter, wretched smile appeared on the woman’s face in bed.

People truly are greedy. Yesterday, all she wanted was to sleep peacefully; waking up this morning, she craved so much more.

Pei Chongxi wound the necklace An Rong had given her loop by loop around her wrist, her facial expression turning cold and detached once again.

She walked to the room directly across from the bedroom, pushed open the door, and what met her eyes was a black and white funeral portrait.

A girl wearing a school uniform looked into the camera awkwardly, offering a shy smile.

She had two braided pigtails tied with colorful hairbands and little clips, appearing as if she were waving at the person behind the lens.

Pei Chongxi took out some incense from the cabinet and lit it with a lighter.

“It’s been ten years, and I finally dreamed of you once. Does that mean you don’t hate me that much?”

Placing the burning sandalwood incense into the burner, the woman standing before the black-and-white photograph spoke in a grief-stricken tone, “An’an, give me another chance to dream of you.”

Downstairs in the kitchen, An Rong, who was currently boiling noodles, suddenly sneezed violently.

The helper who came to assist quickly stepped forward to ask, “Miss, would you like me to handle that instead?”

The auntie quietly observed An Rong.

The employer of this household paid generously for minimal work. The employer was rarely seen, and aside from daily cleaning, the job mostly consisted of cooking a few simple dishes.

Today, as soon as the auntie pushed open the door, she encountered this unfamiliar young girl.

The girl was wearing clothes that were obviously a few sizes too big, and she carried the scent of the employer’s usual perfume. With a bright, vivid expression, she looked to be only about seventeen or eighteen years old.

“Ah, no need, no need! I’ll just boil it myself.”

With practiced motions, An Rong turned on the stove to boil water and cooked herself a bowl of plain noodle soup.

The auntie didn’t press further, shifting to skillfully mix meat filling to wrap wontons on the side.

An Rong blinked her eyes, watching the auntie’s adept movements. Propping her chin in both hands, she asked shyly, “Auntie, how much is your monthly salary?”

The abrupt question caught the auntie completely off guard.

The middle-aged auntie pointed a finger at herself in surprise.

She figured this girl might be the employer’s younger sister, likely visiting temporarily during her winter break.

The auntie stated a figure, and An Rong’s eyes widened instantly. “Wow, that’s so high!”

The auntie’s eyes flared with unhidden pride. “Yes, I work efficiently, so many employers like me and scramble to hire me. Haha, when I went home to take care of my child a while back, some employers couldn’t bear to let me go and repeatedly urged me to come back to work.”

Seeing that An Rong had a lively personality, the auntie couldn’t help but think of her own child, adding a few more remarks.

An Rong blinked, completely forgetting to eat her noodles. She leaned her upper body forward, gripping the edge of the table. “Then Auntie, can I do this line of work too? I’m incredibly quick and tidy when it comes to cleaning houses.”

This single sentence thoroughly startled the auntie. The auntie waved her hands hurriedly, judging by An Rong’s temperament, she looked like someone carefully pampered and raised by the employer, not at all like someone accustomed to hard labor.

The auntie quickly said, “Oh dear, this isn’t something you young girls should be doing. You young girls are supposed to study hard and make big money in the future.”

An Rong pestered the auntie, insisting on getting to the bottom of it. Ultimately, the auntie helplessly pulled out two certificates from the inner pocket of her jacket. “Look here, doing domestic service requires taking exams to get certified. You young people take exams for accounting certificates, teaching credentials, broker licenses, or construction engineer licenses. Unlike us, who can only get these kinds of certificates…”

Speaking up to this point, the auntie’s expression turned a bit awkward.

An Rong leaned closer to take a careful look and said, “This is also very impressive.”

In her mind, An Rong added. Unlike me, who only has a junior high school graduation certificate. Before I could even take the college entrance exam, my life was already over.

An Rong slurped down her bowl of noodles, then smoothly washed the bowl herself, making sure not to add to the auntie’s workload.

She counted the spare change she had on hand using her fingers.

Aside from a dozen or so yuan in paper bills and coins, she had absolutely nothing else.

An Rong currently didn’t have a phone, and she didn’t know how to use the tablet sitting in the living room. If she wanted to go out and look for a job, she would still need to discuss it properly with Pei Chongxi.

At the thought of being dirt poor, An Rong drooped like a cat with its ears pinned back, letting out one sigh after another.

Walking toward the door despondently, she suddenly turned back to question the auntie, “Auntie, do you know how much this house is worth? Is everything inside exceptionally expensive?”

An Rong knew absolutely nothing about the prices of things ten years later; she only knew that even ten years ago, a house like this would have cost an astronomical amount.

The auntie froze for a moment, then thought about it before answering with a figure. “If you factor in the renovations, it’s basically a one to one or one to two ratio with the housing price itself.”

The auntie calculated the total square footage of the entire house on her fingers.

Hearing this, An Rong felt entirely unwell.

Seeing her childish demeanor, the auntie smiled and joked, “Do you also want to buy a villa near here?”

If she were the child of the employer’s family, buying a house here would indeed be perfectly reasonable.

An Rong remained silent for a long moment, then muttered softly, “You think too highly of me. Living here, I can’t even afford the rent.”

An Rong buried her face completely in her hands.

Here, she was forced to consider a very practical problem, she possessed no marketable skills to speak of, so how on earth was she going to afford the cost of living?

While An Rong and the auntie were chatting back and forth, the sound of approaching footsteps suddenly echoed from the top of the stairs.

The auntie immediately shut her mouth, and her working pace became significantly faster.

An Rong was still trying to carry on the conversation. “Then roughly how much are the cars in the garage worth? I saw a few of them, and they are all brands I’ve never seen before.”

What greeted An Rong’s question was a stretch of silence.

Puzzled for a few seconds, An Rong suddenly looked up and collided with a pair of dark, pitch-black eyes.

Pei Chongxi was holding a white medicine bottle in her hand when she caught sight of An Rong standing by the kitchen door.

The girl was still wearing her loungewear. Her soft, long hair had been styled into two highly charming braided pigtails resting against her back, swinging side to side with her movements.

The moment she saw Pei Chongxi, An Rong’s eyes lit up. She took two or three quick strides forward and firmly grabbed Pei Chongxi’s shoulders.

Standing on the staircase, Pei Chongxi was still in a trance, looking down at the psychiatric medication she had been about to pop into her mouth.

Pei Chongxi didn’t know whether she needed to take one pill or two to keep seeing the hallucination, she could only figure it out by trial…

Looking at the vivid, living An Rong right in front of her, she could seemingly smell the aroma of soy sauce noodle soup radiating from the other girl.

Just like in the past, An Rong liked adding white pepper powder and plenty of vinegar to her soup.

Pei Chongxi’s mind fell into utter disarray. She could neither move forward nor step back. Like a frozen statue, she let An Rong grip her shoulders.

Then, she was gently pinned against the glass staircase handrail.

With sparkling eyes, An Rong said, “Sister Pei, I have something to tell you!”

Amid An Rong’s sudden movements, the medicine bottle in Pei Chongxi’s hand slipped and crashed to the floor, white pills clattering and rolling down the stairs.

The young girl was extremely close to her, their noses were practically brushing against each other.

An Rong said, “How about I work for you? I can do chores for you in exchange for the right to stay here. I don’t eat much, I only need to sleep in a small room, and I don’t have many clothes. I can just wear your old, unwanted ones.”

“Sister Pei, if you trust me, you can leave the grocery shopping to me. I can absolutely save you a ton of money! I’m amazing at bargaining!”

What greeted An Rong was a prolonged, heavy silence.

An Rong grew anxious first, pleading, “Sister Pei, didn’t we use to live like this in that tiny rented room? You were responsible for studying hard and selling your study notes, while I worked outside and bought groceries. It’s no different from how things are now.”

Pei Chongxi’s pupils dilated slightly as she stared blankly at the pills rolling down the steps.

Unexpectedly, a warm cheek pressed against her own.

The young girl rubbed her cheek against Pei Chongxi’s, and then, like a child throwing a tantrum, she buried her head straight into Pei Chongxi’s embrace, rubbing her lips against her collarbone.

An Rong’s voice dragged out in a coquettish, spoiled whine. “Sister Pei, you’re rich now, you can’t just abandon me!”

“Just give me a tiny bit of money and a place to live, and I will do absolutely anything for you, Sister!”